OpenAI and AI techno-cult proselytizer Sam Altman recently shouted out an AMC television series called “Pantheon,” which pivots its narrative around the merger of human consciousness and digital technology. In “Pantheon,” the catharsis on offer to viewers appears to be that after exploring themes of corporate diabolism, all will be well for, as the kids say, reasons. Maybe this is why Altman liked it so much.
The show pivots on the creation and insinuation into human experience of a variety of nonconsensual simulated environments. Evil geniuses beam consciousness (“uploaded intelligences”) into sim-world systems, while other geniuses (closer to how we might presumably, but unsuccessfully, imagine ourselves) sort things out a bit. But the latter geniuses retain the ultra-tech-saturated worldview that AI founders like Altman work to
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